A frequent need has developed in most local electric utility offices to obtain a meter reading from kilowatt hour meters having electronic digital register displays. In such circumstances when kilowatt meters are removed from their site location either for servicing or due to a termination of services, removal of the kilowatt hour meter deactivates its digital register display. Errors have arisen when service personnel either forgot or were unable to read the digital display prior to the meter's removal from the site location. Until recently, such kilowatt hour meters that have been removed were typically sent to a meter shop off-site. Generally, kilowatt hour meters sent to a meter shop were energized using specialized kilowatt hour meter testing devices designed to test the accuracy of the meters. However, such devices are very expensive and require special training in their use and operation. As a result, these testing devices have not been readily available to all service personnel nor are all service personnel necessarily trained in their use. This reliance on having to send meters to meter shops where the necessary testing equipment and trained personnel are available has resulted in unnecessary time and expense being incurred in the process of putting the meters back into operation. In the prior art, there are available references such as U.S. Pat. No. 4,922,185 to Davidson et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,271,390 to Canu, U.S. Pat. No. 4,117,530 Reed et al, Farrington, W. H.; "Tests Universal Polyphase Meters"--Electrical World (Jan. 21, 1957), and "The Average Beast: A KWH Meter Tester For Rapid Field Testing of Customers Meters" all of which generally relate to kilowatt hour meters. Among those references, only the reference of Davidson et al shows a diagnostic meter base for testing the connection of a self-contained meter in a polyphase installation. The meter base incorporates a lamp which responds to current through the circuit elements in the base whereby the pattern of lamp responses indicates the pattern connections in the installation.
However, Davidson et al differs from the present invention in that it does not incorporate any structure by which a digital display in the kilowatt hour meter can be energized. As a result, applicant has found that the prior art as a whole has not addressed the problem as discussed above to which the present invention is directed, nor does the prior art have any teaching for a device similar to the present invention.